The Triangulation of Desire and the Chain of Reproduction in Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and Ingeborg Bachmann

Ingeborg Bachmann's short story "Undine geht," from the collection Das dreißigste Jahr, is a twentieth-century reworking of a myth made popular in the nineteenth century by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's novella Undine, which inspired not only Bachmann's story but also operatic versions of the legend (by E. T. A. Hoffmann and Albert Lortzing), as well as Jean Giraudoux's drama Ondine. Fouqué's romantic-era retelling of the myth, in turn, derives from earlier narratives of encounters between human beings and water nymphs, most notably the fourteenth-century Staufenberg legend and the sixteenth-century book by Paracelsus, Liber de nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris et caeteris spiritibus, which describes relationships between human beings and elemental spirits (see Böschenstein; Dischner; Gerstenlauer; Gutjahr). The literary chain of influence just described resembles the chain of sexual reproduction that dominates Bachmann's short story "Alles," also from the collection Das dreißigste Jahr:

Und Sem zeugte Arpahsad. Als Arpachsad fünfunddreißig Jahre alt war, zeugte er den Selah. Und Selah zeugte den Heber. Und Heber den Peleg. Als Peleg dreißig Jahre alt war, zeugte er den Regu, Regu den Serug und Serug den Nahor, und jeder außerdem noch viele Söhne und Töchter danach, und die Söhne zeugten immer wieder Söhne [...].

(140)

Bachmann's reiteration of the biblical view of reproduction, in which women are unnamed participants in the process of male replication, provides a point of departure for her male protagonist, who calls into question this scheme even as he participates in it by having a son. Unlike the men of Genesis, Bachmann's protagonist in "Alles" attempts to think through the implications of the reproductive act:

Ich probierte ein paarmal, diesen Prozeß durchzudenken, nicht nur nach vorn, sondern auch nach hinten, bis zu Adam und Eva, von denen wir wohl kaum abstammen, oder bis zu den Hominiden, von denen wir vielleicht herkommen, aber es gibt in jedem Fall ein Dunkel, in dem diese Kette sich verliert [...].

(140)

The darkness or uncertainty surrounding the origins of literary or biological inheritance is what many writers and participants in the reproductive process wish to suppress or ignore, preferring to see themselves instead as part of an unbroken chain ("Kette") of tradition. Yet the obscurity of its origins hints at the possibility of destabilizing a tradition that is based on women's subservience to men's desire for self-replication (in the case of sexual reproduction) or on men's exclusive claim to a literary voice and the concomitant demotion of women to the subsidiary role of muse or inspiration.

While the biblical view of sexual reproduction and the masculinist view of literary transmission both depend on clearly defined, opposite and unchanging roles for women and men, the creative process demands a variation on these roles, a break with established tradition. Writers hope to differentiate them-selves from and surpass their predecessors; and parents, like Bachmann's protagonist in "Alles," see their children as introducing new possibilities into the world. Both Bachmann, in Das dreißigste Jahr, and Fouqué, in Undine, introduce the idea of a new beginning, a break with literary and societal traditions. Paradoxically, innovation, the breaking of the chain, is possible only through a return to and reconfiguration of origins, particularly the obscure origins of societal and literary traditions. The representative of the obscure, undifferentiated, and chaotic origins of human mythology in Bachmann's and Fouqué's Undine stories is, of course, Undine herself, who alludes to both scientific and mythological accounts of the origins of life: part fish, part human, she can be seen as a link in the evolutionary chain connecting sea creature to human being, and also as a representative of the era described in the creation story of Genesis, before God divided the land from the sea (Gen 1: 9-10). Undine presents a challenge to the system of human sexual reproduction, to clearly defined social roles of men and women that are based on this reproductive system, and, consequently, to...